Communication Skills - what are they?

Um, guys? They're, like,


y'know?

I'm not sure what the skills are. I think it may be easier to identify strategies and tactics.

I, for instance, claim in class that any question that requires discussion before an answer can be found can be approached using a sequence of general skills: background knowledge first, then application of knowledge to a context, then analysis of whatever was arranged under application, and then a judicious balancing, aka an evaluation, of all that was discovered under analysis. I call it the Four Skills Method for short.

Now, all that's well and good, but what happens during the deployment of these skills. What tactics are needed, or just recommended, for any speaker or writer who aims to deploy these skills effectively. And more particularly for China, what modification of these tactics is required when perhaps both the speaker and the listener lack complete control of the language being used?

That really is what I'm interested in: tactics for effectively advancing communication in circumstance of incompletely shared language.

If anyone knew what those tactics might be in general, and knew how to teach them, they'd revolutionise the use of English in China. They'd make students a hell of a lot more communicative from the get go, and they'd make English viable again.

So lets set aside the question of communication skills for the moment (because they're way to vague a concept, and if we develop communication in terms of strategies and tactics instead, "skills" probably amount to knowing when and how to deploy a given strategy/tactic anyway), and let's suppose that overarching communication strategies exist in general. Let's suppose, for instance, that one can very often settle on a strategy of "Knowledge > Application > Analysis > Evaluation" for at least problem-solving communications (of which, a shit ton of communication is anyway - an academic paper is a problem-solution setup, any test question, any political discussion, any discussion requiring an outcome, almost any discussion anywhere, right?)

So I think it's probably possible to speak of at least some kinds of communication in terms of the cognitive or personal skills that need to be deployed in the service of that communication. Maybe (wild hypothesis) all communication strategies can, at a sufficiently general level, be described in such terms. In that case, communication tactics amount to maneuvers meant to further the adequate deployment of a given skill. "Knowledge" for instance if understood as a skill, noting that the skill of knowledge lies in how and when knowledge is wielded, is brought into any communication by such tactics as "You know what, let's check that in the textbook".

What I want to say though, that's the only "tactic" that's come to mind. There must be other general tips you can give to students on what to do when in need of some Knowledge within a communication, or some Application or some Whatever, right? There must be a collection of tactical moves any class of students can be introduced to that they would be expected to deploy from time to time in class discussion, and which they might come to rely on in keeping themselves using English.

Right?

Right.

But then, there's still the question of what to do when the shared language is incomplete. If the immediately available language isn't immediately up to the task of servicing any of those tactics/strategies, what then?

Or can we expect that some shared list of tactical expressions overcomes that problem?

How about if I said all communication exists in one of only three forms: exposition, narrative, and argument?

And there is nothing else.

.... in that case I'm talking about rhetorical modes, and there are four: narration. description, exposition, and argumentation.

There are other modes, presumably, but those are the biggies. If knowledge, application, analysis and evaluation are the core process skills of argumentation, what advances the others? What cognitive or personal skills must you emphasize if you're going to improve you're, for instance, narrative communications?

I find grunting and wildly gesticulating to be particularly useful.

I'm currently trying to locate where a Chinese friend lives.  I know it's somewhere between 2 known points about a mile or so apart, but showing a map out of the back of the local English magazine didn't narrow it down.  So I've walked the shortest route between the 2 points while taking about 100 or so pics along the way.  The next time I see my friend, this should narrow the location down drastically.

Why bother when I could just ask for the address to be written in Chinese and show it to my wife or a taxi driver?  Because it's much more fun to see how far I can get using my very limited Chinese and supplementing that with silly things like a "photo walk".